hen her father died from
grief, to eager thirst for vengeance. And for this purpose I was born.

"You see that--for a bastard--I have been fairly educated; but not a
farthing did his lordship ever pay for that, or even to support his
casual. My grandfather Hoyle left his little all to his daughter
Winifred; and upon that, and my mother's toil and mine, we have kept
alive. Losing sight of my mother gladly--for she was full of pride, and
hoped no more to trouble him, after getting her father's property--he
married again, or rather he married for the first time without perjury,
which enables the man to escape from it. She was of his own rank--as you
know--the daughter of an earl, and not of a farmer. It would not have
been safe to mock her, would it? And there was no temptation.

"The history of my mother and myself does not concern you. Such people
are of no account until they grow dangerous to the great. We lived in
cheap places and wandered about, caring for no one, and cared for by
the same. Mrs. Hoyle and Thomas Hoyle we called ourselves when we wanted
names; and I did not even know the story of our wrongs till the heat
and fury of youth were past. Both for her own sake and mine my mother
concealed it from me. Pride and habit, perhaps, had dulled her just
desire for vengeance; and, knowing what I was, she feared--the thing
which has befallen me. But when I was close upon thirty years old, and
my mother eight-and-forty--for she was betrayed in her teens--a sudden
illness seized her. Believing her death to be near, she told me, as
calmly as possible, every thing, with all those large, quiet views of
the past, which at such a time seem the regular thing, but make the
wrong tenfold blacker. She did not die; if she had, it might have been
better both for her and me, and many other people. Are you tired of my
tale? Or do you want to hear the rest?"

"You can not be asking me in earnest," I replied, while I watched his
wild eyes carefully. "Tell me the rest, if you are not afraid."

"Afraid, indeed! Then, for want of that proper tendance and comfort
which a few pounds would have brought her, although she survived, she
survived as a wreck, the mere relic and ruin of her poor unhappy self.
I sank my pride for her sake, and even deigned to write to him, in rank
and wealth so far above me, in every thing else such a clot below my
heel. He did the most arrogant thing a snob can do--he never answered my
letter.

"I scraped to